All in Forgiveness
Are you fretting over your lack of spiritual perfection? Are you standing on the verge of abandoning your faith because you feel like you keep tripping over the world, and can’t live without sinning? Well, take heart, because you are no different than Peter, Paul, or John, who also sinned, yet just like them you are made perfect... not by your own works and doing, but by the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ. Jesus has shouldered your sin so that you have become pure in God’s eyes.
Do you wake up every morning feeling like you are trapped in a dying body, a body steeped in death? How is it that a war so violently rages within you between the spiritual within and the physical that is without? You are not alone in this conflict between righteousness and sin, but there is assurance of your victory in Jesus. Do not feel like a prisoner of the world when our savior Jesus Christ has set all captives free.
How do you forgive? Do you forgive by degree with the small wrongs being easily forgiven and spoken of openly on the street corners as if forgiving them were a victory, but the large transgressions remaining, and being mulled over in your heart until they are almost forgotten, but never truly put away by true forgiveness? Do you make right the wrongs, and separate them from you? We should forgive the most vile transgressions just as we forgive the minor inconveniences. We should embrace forgiveness as Jesus did.
How often have you disobeyed God, and had calamity fall upon you? When this occurred, what did you do? How did you realign yourself with God, and experience His forgiveness and salvation? What did you promise the Lord in prayer to gain his deliverance from your time of suffering?
Are you so embarrassed and disappointed in your sins that you shy away from God when He calls for you? Do you think that what you have done is so abhorrent to the Lord that just the sight of you will cause Him to shudder and withdraw? Well our God doesn’t see you as a sinner, but as forgiven, washed clean and made worthy by the blood of Christ. Because of Jesus God sees you as who you are, and what you are becoming, and not as who you once were. His love is made complete in you once again by His grace.
You asked Jesus Christ to come into your life, and you know that He gave Himself on the cross so that you would be redeemed, saved from sin, but it was not merely the act of dying that purified you... it was His blood. Death alone does not wash us clean, no, it is the blood of Christ... the very life that flowed within Him.
Were you perfect in the sight of God yesterday, or was it a bad day for you? Did you make it all the day long without sinning once, or were there those moments when you lost control of your tongue, or stepped otherwise into sin? Each of us falls short of perfection in the eyes of God, but that is no reason to stop striving for it. We have a wonderful eraser on the end of our pencil of faith that removes all of our mistakes and perfects us in the end... Jesus Christ.
You are a believer in Jesus Christ, and you do your best to order your life by His teaching, but do you believe, truly believe, that He forgives your sins? If you do, if you believe in who He is, and you believe that He is capable of forgiving your sins, then why is it that you can’t forgive yourself, and let those sins go? Why is it that you continue to carry the guilt of having sinned when God has decided not to remember them?
Do you pray for those around you who are sick, or lost? Do you wait on the Lord in prayer for those who are unrighteous, and don’t know enough to pray for themselves? Do you peel back the sin in your mind’s eye, and pray for the sinner beneath? Can you bring yourself to love the sinner while detesting the sin? does God punish the sin, or the sinners?
How do you treat your sexual body, and how does it impact your spirituality? The greatest bodily temptation is sexual immorality, and God understands this... He is no prude, and knows the desire that we have; after all, He created us with it. Sex is meant to be pleasurable, and by so being, to insure procreation, but when Satan gets hold of it then it loses the purpose that God intended, and becomes misdirected and immoral. Do you have control over your body, your desires, and your sexuality?
Who have you prayed for today? Have you left your prayer closet after having prayed in the spirit for your personal needs, the needs of your family, and maybe a close friend or two? Well if so, that was a good start, but it is only the beginning of our daily prayers. In fact, we should consciously pray for all the saints, and all day long in every circumstance, for every soul in need, and as our conscious prayers fade, we should recognize our unconscious prayers as well.
Do you spread the love of God? Do you give cups of living water to the thirsty each day, or do you worry about their dirty hands touching your polished chalice? It is so easy to turn a blind eye to the ragged, and to detest the smell of the unclean, but these are the very souls that our Lord came to feed, clothe, make clean, and to let drink from His cup. Where were you when you first lifted it to your mouth? Did you think yourself clean and your hands without blame? Did you you smell of righteousness?
When we open ourselves to Jesus Christ and allow Him to enter into us we not only become a new person internally, but also externally. Ezekiel recorded how God transforms us in wonderful fashion, and the New Testament contains many references to how Jesus cleansed us and allows for this same transformation. The sin that we have spoken of in past days is now forgiven, and we are refreshed. Are you ready to be changed?
Are you a reflection of Jesus? Has He instilled in you a gentleness of spirit, and made you lowly of heart... meek? Are these attributes that you even find desirable in this dog eat dog world that exists today? If you allow yourself to be immersed in the blood of Christ then this is exactly how you should look to the those around you! Can you see these characteristics as strengths, and not weaknesses?
Are you living out your life claiming to be a Christian while continuing to live under the control of your own will; skirting God’s? How is it that we can be satisfied in this? How is it that we can taste His will, experience a touch of sanctity, holiness, and joy, then retreat back into our own humanity? This is the struggle of faith... the denial of the comfort we find in our own flesh, nature, and will, that we might accept God’s.